​“The Art of Banksy Without Limits:” The Exploitation of an Artist

Shelley Kopp, ECH Contributing Editor

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The Art of Banksy “Without Limits" debuted in London on April 18th and has been extended until July 28th at 140 Dundas Street, a vacant space that holds the exhibition comfortably. We went on a Monday, around lunch, and were surprised at the number of people who were also there. The tickets range in price from about $27 for children and seniors on a weekday to $72 for a premium adult ticket on a Saturday, which also gave you a book on Banksy and a “paint-your-own” t-shirt. The exhibition begins with a video summary of Banksy’s work, especially films and documentaries he has participated in. It is hard to hear, but visually interesting. Next up is a hologram room that effectively depicts a life-size Banksy spray painting works, sneaking around back alleys, and running from the police. Indeed, as the voice narrates, “police response time” is his thematic impulse like “Monet had light”.
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That is where my problems began. While the 3-D Banksy is effective in seeing what he does, when someone asked me, “is this Banksy talking?”, the answer must be “no.” 

Facade of “The Art of Banksy: Without Limits" in London, Ontario. Photo credit: Jamelie Hassan

The voice is not British. While little is known about Banksy, we do know he is now about 50 years old and originally from Bristol, UK (or at least that is where he pops up in 1990 as part of a group of underground artists), so a voice without an English accent is likely not Banksy’s voice. The voice actually had the cadence of an artificially-generated narrator but there is no way to know since there is no description of what this is. Which highlights the main concern.
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​The show, while giving lots of information about Banksy, including a comprehensive timeline of this work across several walls, fails to explain the things that usual museum-goers might expect. From where does the exhibition information come? What is the material of the images on display—are they works on papers? On canvas? Are they digitized images? Is the stencil on the wall actual paint and who did it? Some wall labels were informative as to the historical context of the image, but very few describe the material form of the image itself. A few works were archival prints; several are signed, limited-edition prints; the majority do not convey in what form the object is. Yes, it is a Banksy “image” or “object,” but Banksy mostly spray paints on walls in exotic locales far from London, Ontario, so what exactly are we looking at?

The exhibition did a fine job of complicating matters of “originality” in our current age of digitally immersive experiences, artificially generated images, and non-fungible token (NFTs—the craze where digital rights to digital imagery and video are sold for astronomical prices in online auctions). Most people attending the show are led to believe, by carefully crafted wording on the ticket website, to believe they are seeing “original” works by Banksy, but in fact the word “original” applies to the fact that the works are created for this exhibit and so they are original to this experience. It is a meticulously constructed description that avoids litigation. If one goes to the production’s website, not just Budweiser Garden’s ticketing website, there is a clear stamp on the main page stating, “unauthorized exhibition” but that is not where search engines take you.

The fact is that Banksy has nothing to do with creating this travelling show, nor the other touring companies displaying his art, nor did he sanction any of them. Indeed, he has implored people not to support them. For an artist that spent a large portion of his early career lampooning commercialism, consumerism, and capitalism (see the documentary Banksy produced from 2010, Exit Through the Gift Shop) this use of his material is deeply ironic and the show pulses with paradoxical moments. For example, there is an image of Banksy’s illustration of the commodification of Jean-Michel Basquiat entitled, BanksyTM Banksquiat that was sold in Banksy’s pop-up shop, “Gross Domestic Product” in 2017. Banksy understood the absurdity of marketing the already marketed, but do we? In paying to attend a show that centres on a living artists’ images, we support a production company touring the world with no benefit to the artist. Banksy receives nothing from any of the touring companies bearing his name. They also make a lot of money using images and objects that are not “original” – in that the majority of items displayed are neither limited edition prints sold to collectors nor museum pieces but rather created by the production company for the exhibition. In Seoul, when the public found out that the show was mostly replicas, the production company apologized and offered a refund. The company says fewer than one percent of attendees asked for one.

This made me wonder as I wandered, how many of the exhibition visitors around me understood what they were seeing and whether they would care if they did know. They were certainly learning a lot about Banksy and street art, but would the fact that the artist was not benefiting in any way from the money flowing through the show give pause? Would it even be a concern to the average audience member?

I would like to think it would matter because we are, after all, in the hometown of the original movement to pay visual artists an equitable amount for their work and give them a share in the profits. In 1968, London artists including Jack Chambers, Tony Urquhart, and Kim Ondaatje organized collectively to demand recognition for artists’ copyright and to produce an annual fee schedule. This came to be known as CARFAC (Canadian Artists’ Representation/Le front des artistes canadiens). Nearly sixty years later, London’s citizens should care about the source of images they are looking at and to whom the money goes when art is shown. Especially here in this city, we must celebrate and defend the right of artists to be paid when their artwork is exhibited.

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​Shelley Kopp earned  a Ph.D.  from the Visual Arts Department at the University of Western Ontario in the summer of 2023. Her area of research focuses on the movement of  traditional artwork to digital media. She examines the concerns and advantages of these forms of representation for the museum which both hosts the original works and disseminates digital copies to their website and to social media.